


Mortal

by JulyStorms



Series: Before Colors Broke into Shades [44]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She fidgets, fingers jumping in her lap, toes wriggling in her boots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mortal

**Author's Note:**

> Requested anonymously on Tumblr ages ago: #12, "things you told me when you thought I was asleep."

She fidgets, fingers jumping in her lap, toes wriggling in her boots. Her boots are too small, she thinks. There isn’t enough room in them to stretch her toes properly. She needs to be able to stretch her toes. She focuses on that stupid little detail because it’s boring and simple. Maybe she should take her boots to a cobbler; they could probably use new soles. All the walking she does—all the running around… It sounds like a good investment. Thinking about her feet is easier than thinking about anything else.

The worst part is that she knows all of this is stupid. Why should she care: about it—about him?

The surface-skimming thought of him is enough to make her look up from her nervous fingers at his bed. He’s sleeping, finally, but it’s as weird to see Levi sleeping as it is to see the blood-soaked string that’s stitched carefully down his arm, holding the skin together.

She’s not going to be sick.

She can’t be sick.

She’s seen so much worse than this.

This is good.

This is a frolic in a meadow.

This is _nothing_. He is alive and the chance of infection is very low. This is routine.

She’s a wreck and she’s being ridiculous. Her behavior is worse than that of a Survey Corps greenhorn. She tries to steel herself: first her hands and then the rest, but she can’t do it.

He may as well have _human_ tattooed on his forehead for all the world to see.

The thought is stupid. She knows it is. But she has it anyway, has it and hates it even though she’s always known that Levi was as human as anyone else.

_“I’m_ the reckless one,” she says, voice tight with something that might be love or fear or relief. Maybe all three of them have combined to create a new emotion. Maybe she’ll try to name it to pass the time. Loearf? It sounds as stupid as she feels, so it’s perfect—but then she’s back to shifting in her seat worrying for nothing.

He’s alive, goddammit. He’s alive and he’s breathing and he’s even able to _rest_ —something he normally struggles with! She ought to be excited, she tells herself. She ought to celebrate this by tousling his too-neat hair and going for a walk to clear her head and enjoy the sunshine.

But she can’t. She’s stuck here in the medical wing, one knee bouncing so hard that if she were in a meeting letting her knee hit the underside of the table like that, Erwin would stop everything just to figure out where that infernal racket was coming from. But Erwin and twenty pairs of critically speculative brass eyes aren’t here to stop her this time.

She’ll just have to think about it some more. About Levi’s humanity. About how he’s not a god, not an angel…and he’s certainly not immortal because he bleeds just like everyone else does. It makes her think of all of the soldiers she’s seen die, not just the ones who were broken to bits by titans, but those who suffered infection and died due to the weakness of their own physical body.

She thinks she’d prefer the snapping teeth and boiling insides over the other. Death by titan is faster. Death by titan doesn’t instill false hope in other people. If a titan swallows you down or bites you in half, you’re dead. Nobody waits around. Nobody tries to save you. It’s easier that way—certainly better than sweating in a bed while people tell you to hang on and try to get you to promise not to give up even though you’re half out of your mind already.

How many people has she seen die that way?

She can almost see them now, squirming from the pain and maybe the smell of their own infection. The memory of it makes her wrinkle her nose with distaste, makes her afraid to swallow—because maybe she’ll somehow be able to taste it, too, the sad rotting of festering flesh.

Moblit shakes her out of it with his voice, calm but for the slight waver that tells her he’s worried. What does that matter, though? He’s always worried about something.

“Squad Leader Hange, do you know where you are?”

“Squad Leader Hange, Captain Levi will be fine.”

“Squad Leader Hange, you’re at Headquarters in the Medical Wing. The year is 848. You are the fourth squad leader. Do you know who I am? Can you see me?”

She shrugs him off, waves him away.

_I’m fine; of course Levi’s fine; I haven’t the time for this; I have work to do._

But she doesn’t move from her spot.

Of course Levi’s human. Of course he can bleed heavily enough that it exhausts him. Of course he needs to sleep to recover his strength—strength that makes him seem inhuman, sometimes.

But she wishes he’d wake up. Wishes he’d open his eyes.

Wishes she didn’t have to sit here and be reminded that humanity’s strongest soldier possesses skills beyond comprehension but is still, in the end, only human.

And that means, of course, that he can do like any other human out there and die.


End file.
